'Fighting with your words'.... Poetry was still a bit sore about that. Though she did feel some distaste, the bitter soda water, in her mouth over the whole ordeal on the first day. She had shown her more embarrassing side of being a bit hot tempered in her loyalty. Not to mention upperclassmen were looking on her with more interest than just writing her off as some weirdo hippie girl. The attention was nice at first, but Peotry realized that hard way that it was all shallow in the end. No one actually wanted to know her. They just wanted to be known as someone who
knew her.
And then come to find that all that drama had stemmed from something as meaningless and shallow as a childhood argument. Mortified was a better word. The little fae seemed to have her sparkle dampened a bit by the whole ordeal, sinking back into her old obscurity of oddity. And people were all too easy to forget her, if only to go back to treating her as a walking sideshow in street fair.
And the willowy girl shrank even further into herself with her friend Abbie's moving away. Now she had no one who understood her. No one. Sure there were a few distance friends who were amused by her, but there was no one who understood her. Ebony-Gold had her circle of friends. Blakey Boy had his. And Kas... Well, Kassy Boy didn't need to have to worry about the worries and tender pains of a girl like her.
So everything was just fine. Fine. Her parents felt some concern over her odd behavior. She seemed more quiet than usual. More lost in thought. Less of the laughing, free floating butterfly they were used to. But her grandparents insisted it was just the growing pains of adolescence. And maybe they were right. Maybe the lonely ache in her chest and bruised pride would fade and heal over as if nothing had happened. It really had nothing to do with her anyway.
Mrs. Kordos workbook and organizing Mrs. Ford's binder were grand excuses not to talk to others and to most keep to herself, both at lunchtime and at home.
Mr. & Mrs. Porter's art class was giving her some trouble. She just...didn't have enough spark to get into the visual drawing and painting. Mr. Porter tried to talk to her after class, his wife at his side, to help her access an 'outlet for those deeper thorns of emotion' though different creative manners. After all, not everyone was a painter or sculptor.
Her creativity steamed from movement anyway. So this class, with it's mixture of Art, Choir, and Band, allowed her to pursue her deeper problems with more of an 'outlet' in her movement as dance routines and songs to sing. Mrs. Porter and her often discussed new music styles to try dance routines to. As for learning an instrument by the end of the year, Poetry wasn't as worried. Her entire family knew instruments they could teach her after all. Profits of living in a creative hippie home.
And thus the first week went by in a hazy blur. The only problem left was the volcano project for the science fair. Ebony, Kas, Blake, and Sadie were all in a different group from her. Karma punishing for being so foul of temperament, she was convinced. And so she would simply keep quiet around the others in Group Five. She wouldn't offer solutions or take lead. She would just quietly did her section of work for the project or anything else everyone told her to do. That was her plan:
Make no impression. Do not get in the way. Do as your told. Nathaniel was quiet too, so Poetry would be able to say words every now and then to keep from being completely irritating in her reserve. Nicoletta Soriano was... well, herself, Poetry supposed, so there was that. Quinten Rumancek and Lily Westburg, too. They were probably going to be a quiet group save Ace-Ezera. He was like a shining comet among silent stars. He was the one to shine a bit more than all the others, naturally. But maybe that was because she was biased in liking him more than the strangers, since he was Kas's friend.
But she had embarrassed herself in front of him and his girlfriend and Kas, so she wasn't overly exciting in having to bare her shame and speak in the group with him. Taking a seat
near those in Group Five, like Quinten and Lily, she took out the stack of library books she had gotten since the first day on Pompeii and Mt. Fuji. A volcano meant links to real volcanos right? Those two were her favorites. Greeks in togas or Edo period people in kimonos. Reading about everyday life in both periods of time, in both countries, had been far more interesting than she had thought.
But hearing Quinten, she suppose they probably wouldn't want to do the project or even talk about it. Lily seemed more interested in Jake anyway. So she stood up again, scooping up her books, pushing then into her backpack with a deep sigh and going back to her usual seat in the center of the classroom. The center. The eye of the storm. People swirling all around her and yet she remained alone and unchanged.
Maybe she should have stayed homeschooled.
Lily and Jake chattered and chatted with Quinten, as he quietly strummed the guitar, and Poetry drummed her fingers on her desk, looking up at the clock. She tipped her head to the side and closed her eyes with a sigh. She could hear the stalking melody of melancholia that had been dragging her down into the deep and heavy ground all week.
Like a statue in ice, her pale hair fell down her back, her pale lashes fanning over pale cheeks. In her soft faded blue shirt and her light colored jeans, with her draping oversized cream sweater, she looked like winter, sitting at her desk, drumming her fingers. Humming to a few chords of the guitar, she sighed and leaned back in her seat, staring at the face of clock, who looked down on her critically.
"I've been left....to lick my wounds/For too long...Down to bone~" She opened her eyes slowly, letting pale water blues wash over the stark cheer that surrounded her without ever seeming to place a caress on her brow.
"Calloused tongue...Itchy teeth...Metal mouth with rubber gums/I can't talk now~" The thin girl seemed to grow thinner in her almost self-inflicted punishment of conversational starvation.
"Hold me for an hour," she whispered softly in her silk soft melody, begging blue eyes up at the clock,
"Flowers bloom in less...." The clock stared back at her.
"We'll brace this crumbling tower...The harvest of distress...""Eeke me out....Make me last/I am a broken ship/A sinking mast..." Caleb mentioned a party or some sort of get together and was inviting Quinten. Another painful ache shot through her chest. It was a wonder her eyes weren't green from the dull vampire of envy that was sapping up all her happiness.
"You filled me up/And made the holes/With fingertips/Red nails and cutting words...Patch me up~" Her face fell and her eyes gazed down with guilt and shame at the desk, ice colored eyes threatening to melt and spill their usually calm waters onto the fake wooden surface.
"Hold me for an hour..." she whispered softly, like a sorrowful ghost attached to this plane by her own agony,
"Flowers bloom in less..." Her glassy gaze lifted to the scornful clock once more.
"We'll brace this crumbling tower..." It glowered down at her in every ounce of its unforgiving nature.
"The harvest of distress..." Poetry closed her eyes, locking the prisoners there away, behind the cell doors of her eyelids.
"Hmmm...hmmmm...Hmmmm......Hmmmm...hmmm~" Ridiculous. She was such a silly, flimsy thing. No wonder she was being punished. She had a wonderful life, filled with nice pictures of smiling people and sunshine, and album books with names and faces of those who said they cared. She should be very happy to be so lucky.
So why did she feel so awful?
"Hold me for an hour..."
"Flowers bloom in less..."
"We'll brace this crumbling tower..."
"The harvest of distress..."
Oberon Demetrius Grimbald
Lᴏᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: Class
Iɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴs: his group
Aria Delaney. Oberon Grimbald. Ebony Washinton. Clyde Lee. Thomas Jones. Jacob McKinnon.
@A Tattooed Girl Aria: All together unremarkable. An athlete with poor heart-sick boys falling over her heels and lapping up the dust of her heels, as if she were some sort of Aphrodite.
@mskennedy615 Ebony: Sweet enough, though much like Aria. However it was unclear as to why the beauty wasn't getting more attention. She was, after all, leaps and bounds over many of the usual 'popular girl' cookie-cutout type.
@Klaykid Clyde: Entertaining and all around rather sincerely good fellow, though his awkwardness in expressing such things was a bit painful to bear witness to. Entertaining though, since he was also an admirer of the Aira one.
@Thane Thomas: A companionable fellow. No complaints.
@smarty0114Jacob: A rotten hollow log of greed, lust, vanity, and pride. No asset to the group what-so-ever and no chance at ever changing his ways till he ended up in a dead end job with an unhappy home life. Pitiable, if irritating.
So this was his group for the volcano project? And what were they all up to during the little free-time any of them would have a decent excuse for mingled outside of their 'worthy' peer group? They were messing around. Of course they were. Oberon ran a hand through his hair, stony expression taking on somewhat of an irritated tick to his sharp jaw.
Standing, the gothic gentleman-dress boy loomed over Aria firstly. His eyes were like that of colored glass: no emotion, no warmth, no clue as to what he might be thinking. Expect for the ticking in his jaw. The tiniest hint of irritation.
"We should designate sections of the assignment to each person in the group," his voice poured out of his pierced lips like bittersweet warm coffee, "Equal work, but minimum interaction." The dark boy glanced from Caleb to Ebony to Thomas and back to Aria. "Everyone holds up their own end. Anyone who fails to pull their weight will be reported and," he looked squarely at Jacob, "offered up to get a flat failing grade."
"The sooner it is planned and delegated, the sooner I can be done with such trivial so called 'science' of making a child's volcano," he ran a hand through is hair and let a corner of his mouth tilt up in an almost arrogant smirk, "I have better things to waste time on than something so simple a six year old could do an adequate job at completing..."
